


The best kind of trouble

by LyraTalus, melon_gel (LyraTalus)



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Soulmate-Identifying Timers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 15:12:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17869607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraTalus/pseuds/LyraTalus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraTalus/pseuds/melon_gel
Summary: From a soulmate AU prompt-list on tumblr.





	The best kind of trouble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScribeProtra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribeProtra/gifts).



Agatha’s timer shorted out from time to time - froze unexpectedly for minutes or hours, ran backwards sometimes, displayed nonsensical letters and numbers when her headaches were particularly bad - sometimes she felt it was just one more thing that was _wrong_ with her. 

But. 

Glitches aside, it counted steadily down. She sat down with Adam when she was younger and double-checked the days: Agatha _would_ meet her soulmate a little bit before her nineteenth birthday. That was widely considered a very romantic age for one’s timer to run out, very classic, which was… something. When she held that in mind, it was nice to be normal, to be ideal, in this one thing.

With a handful of weeks left on the clock, she lost the locket that was her only memento of her birth parents. 

Her life was turned inside out in a matter of hours, but her timer’s behavior became calmer and more normal than it had ever been. And then Agatha was _less_ normal than _she_ had ever been. Her headaches cleared up like the sky above Castle Wulfenbach, her brain and her hands finally, finally cooperating with the blueprints she could see whenever she closed her eyes. 

And then she was a Heterodyne. And then she was an orphan. And then she was a fugitive. Her timer ticked on, no stops or stuttering, right on schedule. It was a touchstone she found she sorely needed.

And then there was less than a day left, and the circus caravan was due to arrive in the kind of tiny rural town whose first reaction to a Spark was likely to involve torches and pitchforks. She hoped – _blue thunder_ , she hoped, as the wagons rolled up to the gates of Zumzum – that her soulmate could love a girl who brought nothing but trouble.

—

Timers ran differently for the Jägerkin. Dimo could remember, when he was a human youth, seeing fifteen years left and thinking that would be half an eternity. When he took the Brau and lived, it slowed so much that it was over two decades before the timer displayed fourteen years instead. Oggie’s timer had been faster- one year for every six or so years, if he remembered right, but Oggie had loved and lost a long time ago now.

(Jenka said that one day, if they all lived, she and Oggie might, _might_ , get a second timer. If they were very lucky.)

Dimo was more patient, now, and he used the days on his timer to count the months he and Maxim and Oggie searched in vain for a Heterodyne to bring them and their brothers home. For the last few years, he’d hoped he might replace that comfort with a soulmate who – despite what Jägers still meant to most people – would like him and want him and count down the days to his next visit the way that he counted up the months he and the boys spent alone.

Those odds didn’t seem good, with himself and his brothers strung up on a makeshift gallows. The circus folk were promising, though; bound to be friendlier than the townies. He couldn’t see his timer now, with his hands bound behind his back, but he fancied he could feel it ticking out its last moments.

And then-

_[tick]_

He caught a whiff of that something he’d _ached_ for all this time, and-

_[tick]_

It was impossible, but the young woman in the blue dress met his eyes, and-

_[ **tick-click** ]_

_It was true._

(Oh, she was going to be the _best_ kind of trouble!)

**Author's Note:**

> No promises, but I kinda want to continue this...


End file.
